The Senior Seminar is designed to be the capstone of the History major. Its purpose is to provide students with an intensive, practical research and writing experience. The focus of this seminar will be the Vietnam War. In addition to common readings and discussions about various aspects of the Vietnam War, students will be required to research and write a scholarly paper based on primary and secondary sources about some aspect of the war or its legacy.

As a people, Americans have been loath to acknowledge an imperialist thrust in our national history, taking refuge instead in the myth of American exceptionalism and moral superiority. Yet aspirations of empire have always been an integral part of the American experience. In 1783 Washington characterized the newly-independent United States as a "rising empire." Jefferson famously spoke of "an empire of liberty." Supporters of westward expansion invoked providence and America's "manifest destiny" as justification for the thrust to the Pacific. In the late nineteenth and early 20th century, imperialists and anti-imperialists debated the legitimacy and desirability of the emergent"new American empire." Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11, advocates of American empire have arisen, to be met by equally vocal critics of American imperial ambitions. In 2004, a "senior adviser" to President Bush remarked: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." Has the United States been an empire? Are we now an empire? Should we be? What is an empire? How does the American experience compare with past empires? What are the implications of empire for social, economic , and political developments in the "Homeland"? Through reading, discussion, and individual research, this seminar will address these and other questions relating to the theme of empire from the end of the 18th century to the present.

In 1847, during the great age of the freak show, the British periodical Punch bemoaned the public's "prevailing taste for deformity." This vividly detailed work argues that far from being purely exploitative, displays of anomalous bodies served a deeper social purpose as they generated popular and scientific debates over the meanings attached to bodily difference. Upending our tendency to read late twentieth-century conceptions of disability onto the bodies of freak show performers, Durbach shows that these spectacles helped to articulate the cultural meanings invested in otherness--and thus clarified what it meant to be British--at a key moment in the making of modern and imperial ideologies and identities.

The American West Center at the University of Utah, along with the Utah
Division of Indian Affairs, KUED-7, the Utah State Office of Education,
and the American Indian nations that call Utah home, has completed the
"We Shall Remain: Utah Indian Curriculum Guide"/ /(UICG). UICG provides
educators with a comprehensive resource to teach the unique history and
culture of Utah's Ute, Navajo, Goshute, Southern Paiute, and Northwest
Band of the Shoshone nations. The preparation of the Guide was
coordinated by Assistant Professor of History and Gender Studies Matt
Basso, the Director of the American West Center, with collaboration by
Associate Professor of History W. Paul Reeve and the assistance of many
History graduate students.

The history of Utah--and, indeed, of the United States--looks
significantly different when viewed from the Indian perspective. It is
essential for students to learn about Utah's tribes' long struggles for
survival and why those struggles occurred. It is just as essential for
students to realize that while each of these tribes has had setbacks and
tragedies, they have also had triumphs. In making their stories the
centerpiece of this project, the American West Center has drawn on more
than forty years experience collecting, preserving, interpreting, and
disseminating the remarkable histories of the West's diverse
populations, particularly American Indians. The Center's history of
collaboration with tribal communities and commitment to weaving
heretofore silenced Indian voices into the historical narrative will be
very apparent in these lessons.

The project includes twenty-four complete lesson plans, eight each for
fourth grade, seventh grade, and tenth/eleventh grade, that were
developed in consultation with K-12 teachers. At each grade level, the
lesson plans united by a common theme--"culture" in the fourth grade,
"ingenuity" in the seventh grade, and "sovereignty" in high school. Each
lesson plan is grade-leveled, tied to NCSS Standards, Utah State
Standards, and Accreditation Competencies, and has detailed objectives
and procedures.

UICG complements and extends the classroom use of KUED-7's acclaimed /We
Shall Remain/ documentaries; however, each lesson plan can also stand
alone. All lesson plans offer numerous modifications for teachers and
come with materials specially designed for students, such as excerpts of
primary source documents, and for teachers, including an "At a Glance"
section with a strong but concise historical background. Because the
goal for this project is to empower teachers to make the history of
Utah's five American Indian nations a central part of their teaching,
there are also a number of introductory resources, including brief
histories of each of the five nations and an overview of Great Basin
American Indian history.

The online version of UICG replicates the print version, but it also
contains a variety of built-in links, including six interactive Google
Earth maps that expand a number of lesson plans in highly useful ways.
Additionally, as part of the larger curriculum project of the American
West Center, UICG is fully integrated with the Utah American Indian
Digital Archive (UAIDA), a research tool recently developed by the
American West Center and J. Willard Marriott Library Special
Collections. UAIDA--which, like the online version of UICG, is at
www.UtahIndians.org provides
keyword-searchable access to thousands of maps, photographs, oral
histories, books, articles, and government and tribal documents related
to Utah's American Indian communities. These sources supply teachers and
students with a deeper background on the history of the tribes and
facilitate student research projects.

The preparation of the Guide was coordinated by Assistant Professor of History and Gender Studies Matt Basso, the Director of the American West Center, with collaboration by Associate Professor of History W. Paul Reeve. History graduate students Annie Hanshew and Jenel Cope each played a major role in seeing the Guide completed, and John Alexander and Michelle Fellows also contributed through their work on the Utah American Indian Digital Archive.

The Department of History would like to congratulate Eric Hinderaker upon receiving the Dixon Ryan Fox Manuscript Prize. Established in 1973, this prize is awarded annually by the New York State Historical Association. It is presented each year to the best unpublished, book-length monograph dealing with some aspect of the history of New York State.

In September 1755, the most famous Indian in the world--a Mohawk leader known in English as King Hendrick--died in the Battle of Lake George. He was fighting the French in defense of British claims to North America, and his death marked the end of an era in Anglo-Iroquois relations. He was not the first Mohawk of that name to attract international attention. Half a century earlier, another Hendrick worked with powerful leaders in the frontier town of Albany. He cemented his transatlantic fame when he traveled to London as one of the "four Indian kings."

Until recently the two Hendricks were thought to be the same person. Eric Hinderaker sets the record straight, reconstructing the lives of these two men in a compelling narrative that reveals the complexities of the Anglo-Iroquois alliance, a cornerstone of Britain's imperial vision.